I ended up digging some old Orks out of the lead-mountain the other day and doing some more of the ongoing work to turn lead into armies (which is the first step in the quest to turn lead into games!).
I think these sculpts are great; I really like the WWII feel to them with their 'commando' knitted hats; they're all packing Swiss Army Knives which is a great touch; and overall they're just more quirky than the current Ork Kommandos.
From left to right (in all the shots), you can see the three different groups I got them in.
The 'oldest' (to me) of the bunch are the two on the left, with no detailing done on the base. I got them through ebay, and when I got them I think they'd been undercoated in white and then the uniforms had been blocked in in red. So they looked a little like a couple of Father Christmases when they arrived. I decided, in
homage to the old-skool nature of the minis, I'd go old-skool with the paint scheme too and reference the old lore that, though some Orks adopted camo patterns, they didn't really know what they were for so made them very bright (also, 'my' version of the fluff says Orks may see colours differently to Humans anyway). Basic red (as it was already on the minis) with black and yellow splodges, I thought - that probably looks like camo to an Ork. So I did, and added dark brown hats and paler brown knapsacks.
The next lot were the 5 in the middle - sadly one missing his axe, but finding/making a replacement isn't a problem - with the properly done bases (which I now have to match). These came with camo in mixed red/brown streaks. It was pretty easy to get that camo to match the previous scheme I'd done - I mostly painted the yellow and black over the brown (it was a sort of orangy-brown anyway, though a couple of surviving bits of it look greenish in the photos). Suddenly, Bog's your uncle, I had some Ork Kommandos that actually looked OK ('Orkishly Kommandoid' I think it means) together. The hats were slightly lighter brown on the second batch of figuresand the knapsacks were a little more greenish, but, hell, they were pretty close. I washed the new hats with black to darken them a bit, in fact I probably went too far, but hey-ho. I'm happy with them.
Lastly, thanks to our very own Mason some time last summer, I snagged the two on the right, who came with red fatigues and black spots, and black hats (and again no work yet on the bases). Not too difficult to add some yellow splodges at all! I'll get round to the hats in the next batch of paining, hopefully in a few days, where they'll hopefully become the same dark brown as the others.
I also painted unit markings on the roundels on all the Orks' knapsacks. Even though some of the logos look a little like maps of the Americas, they're supposed to be lightning flashes. I have loads of old Ork transfer sheets from 40k and Gorkamorka, but despite the fact that I have literally dozens of yellow, black, white and red lightning flashes, I have no green.
Why green lightning flashes? I hear you ask; because these guys are "Grubdakka Orkyzag" or "Cunning Attack Green Lightning". Any fans of the book 'Mortal Engines' may be reminded at this point of the Anti-Tractionist 'Green Storm Commandos' - yup, that's what my Ork unit is named after. If you don't know the book(s), then I can heartily recommend them: anything that begins 'it was a blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea' is pretty bloody intriguing I reckon. However, Orkish is an unsubtle language, and "Cunning Attack Green Lightning" is the closest I could get.
I think the early choice of paint scheme has been quite lucky, or prescient, or maybe it's just a classic and so not hard to tie other people's paintjobs in with it. I'm certainly pleased I've not really had to 'repaint' much, just so far add bits to what's already done. Obviously, there's still
a lot of work to do on these guys, but I'm pleased at how they're coming together.
As I only have 9, and I want 10 of them (and I don't have any obvious leader), I'm building a leader figure from a mix of older and newer bits... not sure how they'll fit together and what the end result will be. It may be that I have to abandon the attempt and try to source a suitable old-skool leader. We'll see what happens! I'm certainly having fun finding out.
Inspired by the groovyness of it and by some very nice banners I have seen recently, I also knocked up some logos of a kind, one as a banner that may become attacked to some kind of vehicle (not for the Kommandos, but certainly allied to them). Well, sometimes it's not convenient to paint. I haven't tried to print it yet, it may look awful when it comes out, but I thought I'd share anyway.
May 18, 2009, 10:01:34 AM
